Tom was quiet for a moment. “You’re not going to like it.”
She took her coffee to the back porch. The moonlight shining on the rose blooms was a beautiful and surreal picture. One she didn’t see. “I have my big girl panties on, Tom. Tell me how to save my family.”
4
Max woke with a splitting headache and the taste of stale vomit in his cotton-dry mouth. His first thought was, if drinking could kick his butt this hard, he needed more practice. His second was of the man bleeding behind the shattered table, the bullet he put through his forehead.
Sitting up fast was a bad idea. One he should have thought about before he did it. When the world started spinning, he knew he was about to lose what little was in his stomach. Not a great plan. Without food in his stomach, it meant painful dry-heaves that would hurt like the devil.
The fact that his hands were still cuffed behind his back and he wore shackles like ankle bracelets, was a bad sign.
He tucked his head between his legs and repeated the mantra, I am not going to puke, until the feeling passed. The fetid odors of the Mexican jailhouse fought his efforts to get his stomach under control. Granted, at the moment, bacon would have smelled just as bad. But it wasn’t bacon.
He couldn’t even pinch his nose shut to block out the smell, so he tried not to think about it. The goose-egg throbbing on the back of his skull helped bring back the events at the cantina. A concussion. He’d take that over not being able to hold his liquor any day of the week.
If he was here because he killed two gringos, he might still be okay. If he was here because Grey’s men had found him, he was better off dead.
The man in the next cell rattled off a question in Spanish that Max’s abused brain couldn’t quite follow. Like a Chinpan movie translated to English, there was a delay between the man speaking and the translation center in Max’s brain. “What did you do?”
“Sold a busload of nuns to Sea World for 6,000 pesos,” Max answered and tried to get his eyes to focus on the man across the way. “Apparently they frown on that down here.”
“You are either crazy, or stupid.”
Max laughed and his battered head scolded him for it. “Is there a law against being both?”
Metal on metal and the sound of a heavy door on rusted hinges drifted down the corridor. Footsteps slapped the concrete floor until three pairs of black boots stood within Max’s tucked field of view. Good. He hated waiting. At least now he’d find out if he was up shit creek, or drowning in it.
The cell was a small, single occupant job. One stained mattress on a rack attached to the wall, one toilet and a sink. Three steps would have him at the bars, within reach of the goons on the other side. Stains darkened the cement floor, but he didn’t dare contemplate on what had caused them.
Lifting his head up, he straightened his shoulders and stood up, staying next to the bunk. If the bastards wanted him, they were going to have to come and get him.
A guard stepped forward, putting the other two behind and to the sides of him. “My name is Sergeant Diego Alvarez. What is yours?”
Sergeant my ass, Max thought. The military style uniform and the black beret told him everything he needed to know. President Enrique Peña Nieto’s independent gendarmerie had spread like wildfire, unchecked. “Pudd’n.”
He figured his smart remark would elicit frustration, a little anger, get a fight going so he might have a chance of getting out of there. Even in cuffs and shackles, Max was sure he could take one, maybe two, of them. If they got him into the hall where all three could get a hold of him, he might be in trouble.
Instead of rising to the bait, the man just smiled at him. “Pudding. I like that. Very sweet, tasty. Carlos!”
A man across the corridor, two cells down stood up. He was just about the biggest, hairiest SOB Max had ever laid eyes on.
“You like pudding, too, don’t you Carlos?”
The ape-man grinned and his teeth, even at twenty paces, looked like tombstones. His tongue snaked between them and he licked his lips. “Si, especially vanilla.”
Max cleared his throat. He should really learn to keep his trap shut. “I’m afraid you’re going to have to shoot me.”
“Or you could just cut the crap and answer my questions, Pudding,” he grinned. “I am good either way. You are our guest here, so I will let you choose.”
“So good of you. My name is Mickey. Mickey Mouse.”
A guard in the back snorted a laugh before Diego’s glare silenced him. When he turned back to Max, he said, “You are a funny man. I happen to have just the thing for funny men, Pudding.”
He pulled out what at first appeared to be a small pistol from his holster and caressed the side with his thumb. “These are illegal in your country, Si?”
Tazers were designed to give suspects a five second shot of a non-lethal electrical current. What he held in his hand was its black market counterpart. Another humanitarian gadget created by C.O.R.E.
There was no five second stop. No safety threshold on the voltage. The guy holding it controlled how long and how hard it would hit. Nor would it just stick in his skin like a dart. If the guy holding it didn’t release the barbs and he tried to pull it out, it would rip a hole in his skin the size of a quarter.
By the look on Diego’s face, it wasn’t set on stun.
Max took a step back. “All right. Just settle down. We’re all friends here.”
“I do not think so, Max Dumerick.” Diego laughed at Max’s surprise. “Yes, we know who you are. We took your fingerprints after Juan put you to sleep. Just because you see a sleepy backwater town, does not mean that we are all backwards people.”
The man, Max guessed it was Juan, pulled a compact print reader from his pocket and wiggled it back and forth.
“A funny thing happened when we read your prints, Señor Dumerick,” Diego nodded his head toward the doors and Juan put his toy away and retrieved his keys. “Your identity flashed for only a second before it was wiped from the system. What do you think that means?”
The heavy metal door groaned on corroded hinges when Juan swung it open. Max tried to take a step back and the bunk hit him in the knees, forcing him to sit down. “You forgot to check the batteries?”
“No,” Diego smiled. “I do not mean that it was wiped from the device, or that the device is dead. I mean to say that it was wiped from the Global Network.”
As much as Grey wanted him, he didn’t have that kind of power. Not yet, not unless something had changed while Max had been in hiding. He wasn’t afraid of pain, or dying. If he had a choice between being electrocuted and dying covered in his own filth in a Mexican jail or become Grey’s plaything, he would take Diego’s brand of poison.
How long would it take them to get here after his file was flagged? Not long. Max relaxed on the bunk and smiled. “I don’t think you have enough hair on your ass to juice me.”
Diego stopped just inside the cell, his eyes narrowed to slits. “What game are you playing now, funny man?”
Not as dumb as he looks, he locked eyes with Diego and tried to make the man believe the games were over. “Do you know who Cecil Grey is?”
“Of course. He is not known for his mercy, even in Mexico.”
“You see, I stole something for him, something he wants very badly. Something that could wipe out a city like New York in the flash of an eye. There wouldn’t be a trace of living tissue left. He wants it back. And when he gets here, he’s going to kill you because now, you know.”
“If that were true, people would know.”
“If the dog hadn’t stopped to shit he’d have caught the rabbit,” Max quipped without thinking. He hated the word ‘if’. It was an excuse used by sheep to keep from making a decision and sticking to it. “People don’t know, because whoever is behind its creation has a hell of a lot more power than Grey. And I’d bet they’re the ones that wiped my prints so they are on their way here.”
“You are still playing games,” Dieg
o said, but the look in his eyes said he wasn’t so sure.
“There’s only one way to be sure, Diego.”
“I am listening.”
“You have to kill me. Kill me and get rid of the body. Play stupid when they get here. You never saw me.”
The man behind him, the man who wasn’t Juan, whispered something in Diego’s ear. “They know where the prints came from. They will know we had you in our custody. It would be better to hand you over to them, if they come for you.”
“You’re a coward.”
“Perhaps,” Diego took another step into the cell and raised the Tazer. “But I imagine they will be a little more forgiving if they think you were incapable of telling us anything. You should not have resisted arrest.”
There was nowhere to run, no way to dodge the barbs as Diego pulled the trigger. The shock was instantaneous. Max’s jaw clenched shut, his muscles locked tight, and his brain filled with white noise. Static.
5
Four hours after the call from the President, Mittie Kate and Ling bounced across gravel roads to the small town of Las Madre. The full moon offered more than enough light to travel the roads with the headlights and dash lights off. Unless someone was awake to hear the Jeep pass, they wouldn’t be noticed.
Not that there were many people still in the area. The Chihuahuan countryside left no doubt that they were in the desert. Ten years ago, there would have been more people to contend with. More travelers. Now, it was mostly empty land, cracked and barren in the moonlight.
Everyone, even these hardened folk, were looking for better, more fertile pastures. In the tropics, storms had grown much more frequent, more intense while places like this, in the rain shadow, suffered unparalleled and unrelenting drought conditions. It was hard to believe the northern end of this desert, across the border to the U.S. was becoming more fertile.
Places like the Philippines were constantly struggling to protect their people from being inundated with floodwaters, which destroyed homes and contaminated both food and water supplies. Yet, places like Africa were becoming more hospitable, their climates more temperate. Great for newcomers looking for a better way of life, debilitating for those used to living and farming in the hotter, more arid climate.
“The Earth will find a new balance,” Ling’s voice drifted out of the darkness beside her like a Zen Jiminy Cricket.
She glanced at him and found his face serene in the moonlight, despite her driving. They had beaten this topic into the ground. Though he knew her obsession with it, she hated to admit it. “That was not what I was thinking about.”
She didn’t have to see it, to know he had arched one well-groomed eyebrow. Innocent enough, she couldn’t help but wonder if that was his way of laughing at her. “It wasn’t,” she insisted.
When he didn’t argue, she added, “I was thinking a Tibetan monk and an old woman walk into a Mexican jail.”
“We are a fairly conspicuous pair.” He conceded to the subject change without forcing the issue. She loved that about him, but she knew he wasn’t fooled. “Have you come up with a punch line yet?”
“You are supposed to say, ‘No, Mittie. You’re still young and beautiful’.”
“You are older than you were yesterday.”
She maneuvered around a curve filled with potholes before looking at him. His face was still serene. The town of Las Madres lay in shadows under the moon. Lights burned in two buildings, the rest were shrouded in darkness. “That’s the worst Confucius crap you’ve come up with yet.”
His eyebrow arched again and his mouth twitched. “The age of a flower does not detract from its strength or beauty.”
“We really need to work on your lying skills,” she laughed. “They leave a little something to be desired.
Mittie pulled the Jeep into an alley, two buildings down from the jail. Light blossomed in the still air as Ling manipulated the screen on his data pad. After a few moments, he put the pad away and opened his door. “We’re clear. Looks like there’s trace technology. Nothing linked to the GN. How do you want to handle it?”
“Same as always.” She smiled as they stepped onto the boarded sidewalk and headed for the jail. “We’ll just ask nicely. I’m sure they’ll be reasonable men.”
Ling let out a very un-Zen-like grunt and opened the door for Mittie Kate. He followed in his usual position, two steps behind and to the right of her. The man behind a rickety desk, one corner held up by a stack of paperback books, turned to the sound of the door opening. One look at his guests brought him to his feet.
Mittie heard a small puff of air from behind her and the man fell back into his seat. She was already moving towards a set of stairs in the back of the room before the small rivulet of blood began tracing a path from the bridge of the officer’s nose to his chin.
Voices drifted up from below. Distorted by the cement and brick walls that constructed the basement, but discernable.
“You’re a coward.”
“Perhaps, but I imagine they will be a little more forgiving if they think you were incapable of telling us anything. You should not have resisted arrest.”
Mittie turned the corner in time to see a fat, sweat-stained policeman step into the cell, raising a small pistol. The other two officers were intent on watching the show and didn’t see Mittie and Ling as they walked down the short hall to join them. Through the bars, she could see two other prisoners. Both appeared native to the area and both were likewise, too entertained to notice their arrival.
When the electric buzz of the Tazer filled the room, followed at once by the thick smell of ozone and singed flesh, the two guards dropped, one right after the other. Except for the small trail of blood on their temples, the small caliber Ling used made no mess at all.
The bullet pierced the skull once and lost velocity. Staying inside the skull, it ricocheted off bone, scrambling the brain enough to ensure instant death with very little cleanup. A very considerate weapon choice.
Stiff as a board, his body vibrating like a plucked guitar string, the man they sought was drooling and slowly working his way off the bed and onto the floor. He was a mess. Three days of beard growth covered his face, but did little to hide the unwashed flesh beneath it. His clothes hung from his body in loose folds. His time on the run after double-crossing his partner in Washington had not been kind to him.
Mittie stepped around the policia, barely managing not to brush against him, or the filthy sink and toilet. Brown eyes under heavy brows went wide in surprise as she sat down on the bunk next to the human current-bush. Just as he opened his mouth to speak, his eyes rolled back and he hit the floor, his finger coming off the Tazer’s trigger.
With the fatal shot fired and the last potential obstacle down, Ling stepped back into the hall and quickly dispatched the two other prisoners. It wouldn’t do to leave witnesses. Not when she and Ling were so easily identified by their odd pairing.
Mittie Kate was impressed. Still cuffed and shackled, the man began an ungraceful struggle to get himself to a corner, where he could prop himself up and get his equilibrium back. His beautiful blue eyes rolled back and forth between Ling and Mittie, loose and jittery in their sockets.
“You’re younger than I expected,” she said and laughed as confusion passed over his face unchecked.
“His circuits are still misfiring.” Mittie looked up at Ling and returned a smile. It hadn’t been that long ago since Ling had been hit with a similar contraband weapon.
“He certainly isn’t handling it as well as you did. Still,” she turned to watch the man try to clear his head, “he is handling it better than most.”
“Mr. Dumerick.” Ling had long since put his gun away. He stepped toward the man with hands raised, palms out. “We do not have much time. We need to know if the device you stole is safe, or if it has already been taken.”
When Dumerick spoke, the words seemed to fall from numbed lips. It made Mittie Kate smile. “You’re not with Grey.”
“No, Ma
x,” Ling answered. “We are not.”
Mittie Kate smiled and patted Max on the leg, making him flinch. “Let’s just say that for the past forty years or so, we have tasked ourselves with protecting basic human rights. There has always been evil in the world. That little device you have, Max, is the ultimate manifestation of evil. It is the only thing remaining of the Genesis Project, and we are here to destroy it.”
Max leaned forward and braced himself on his knees, not making eye contact with either of them. Ling cocked his head to one side and said, “Mittie Kate, I believe our new friend knows exactly what the device does. Is that why you shot your partner, Max? Is that why you ran with it?”
Still not making eye contact, Max snorted a caustic laugh. “I don’t give a rat’s furry ass about human rights or anyone else.” Max struggled for a minute to get the cuffs under his ass and around his legs so that his hands were in front of him. “That device will fetch a hell of a price on the black market.”
Mittie Kate pressed her lips together to keep from laughing. His wrists were raw where the electric current from the tazer had been attracted to the metal of his handcuffs, he’d broken the skin getting his hands in front of him, he stank, and he looked like he’d just come off a week long bender. The kid had nothing to be cocky about, but he sure was putting on a good show.
She stood up and walked to the open cell door. “I can give you so much more than what you’d get from the black market. I’ve seen your file. Men like you, with your particular brand of skills, would be awfully handy to a cause such as ours. Are you interested?”
Before he could answer, a pressure-driven hum filled the basement. Mittie Kate and Ling stepped into the corridor, their eyes on the open doorway at the head of the stairs. Forcing his legs to obey his commands, Max joined them.
Ling smiled. “Time’s up.”
6
Mel gripped the door frame to her daughter’s bedroom, hard enough to leave small crescent indentations from her fingernails. Pressing her forehead against the cool wood of the door, she fought the urge to yank it open and take her baby into her arms one last time. If she did, she would never leave.
Genesis (Extinction Book 1) Page 2
